Lobbyists, donors still have access to Obama White House

4/15/12 10:45 AM EDT

The New York Times takes a look at the access that lobbyists and big donors have had to the White House, despite a pledge by the Obama administration to eliminate influence peddling:

Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits.

More broadly, the review showed that those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times.

The reasons someone might have gained access to the White House and made a donation are wide-ranging, and it is clear that in some cases the administration came down against the policies being sought by the visitors. But the regular appearance of big donors inside the White House underscores how political contributions continue to lubricate many of the interactions between officials and their guests, if for no other reason than that donors view the money as useful for getting a foot in the door.

It's not a new line of attack against the White House: Critics have long noted that lobbyists have gotten waivers to work in the West Wing and donors have had the ear of the president and his top advisers. And it's not at all a departure from previous administrations.

The White House notes that they have gone out of their way to be transparent -- the visitors logs themselves are a voluntary disclosure effort by the administration.